Find a Penny
by rejooc
Summary: The brutality of war didn't only impact the wizarding world, but Dudley isn't quite sure how to escape the pain of having lost so much. Except perhaps by going to the only other person he knows who understands.


**A/N: Ravenclaw, Prefect, Bonus Round, Prompts: Bad guy turns good trope, Dudley Dursley, Penny. W/C: 2139**

 _Find a penny, pick it up..._

Dudley Dursley was not a lucky man. He had, in his adulthood, come to recognize that he was a privileged one, but luck was not his friend and he spent much of his time trying to avoid the inevitable failings his misfortune brought him. He also spent much of his time trying to forget.

When he and his parents had first been smuggled away by strange people in the early hours of the evening, leaving Harry Potter behind, Dudley had been… confused. Not just at first, really, he'd been confused for a while. He was torn in the realization that that boy, his cousin, was really more like a brother, and in the eyes of his parents, wasn't really anything at all. He should've known better, he supposed, after years of seeing how they treated him, but couldn't help feeling a bit out of sorts upon leaving him behind. It seemed wrong.

Harry and the others with him had taken time to explain about the war that was apparently going on, and especially to explain why it was so important for Dudley's small family of… what was that word? Smuggles? That seemed fitting… Dudley's small family of Smuggles had to be taken someplace safe and far away from his magical cousin. The idea hadn't sat well with any of them, but for different reasons.

Father had been angry and disgusted, not to mention the embarrassment of being stolen away from their neighbors and the "perfect" life they'd created at 4 Privet Drive. Mother had been more resigned and she seemed lost in some memory of tragedy. It wasn't a memory she ever shared with Dudley, but he knew it must've involved her deceased sister, Harry's mother. Dudley himself was just feeling sad. He didn't really understand what was happening but the idea of leaving Harry to face it all alone seemed unreasonable. They were just lads. Mother and father wouldn't leave Dudley behind, why should they leave the smaller of the boys behind?

 _...and all day long, you'll have good luck…_

It wasn't long before the reports started coming in. Those terrible, gruesome reports. It didn't seem like Dudley's friends had been singled out necessarily, but it also didn't seem like it could quite be a coincidence. When they first started dying, one by one, father had insisted it was Harry.

"That little freak's getting his revenge!" father had said with a red face.

But Harry wouldn't do that, even if he was a freak. Which he wasn't. Probably.

Harry wouldn't kill all those boys and their families. Some of them had child siblings, and it didn't make sense for Harry to go on the run, only to come back to Little Whinging and murder all his childhood bullies. Dudley counted himself among those, as much as he might hate that now, and he was still alive, so that didn't make sense anyway.

Dudley couldn't help feeling a bit responsible himself. He knew that his friends were also Smuggles (or whatever) and wondered if he should've done something to help get them out of the area. Maybe it was that evil snake-faced guy the strange people had shown him pictures of causing all of this. He hated to imagine what it would be like to die at the hands of someone like that.

But Dudley hadn't died. He supposed that meant he was a type of lucky, although he rarely felt like it. With no one in the world left to him except a set of parents he could hardly stand to be around, Dudley felt empty and crushed. It didn't help any that looking back on his friends and on his cousin meant he was essentially looking back on a person he never wanted to be again.

 _...give a penny to a friend…_

Dudley found a penny, bright and shining on the sidewalk, when he went outside for a smoke. It was a bad habit, and one he'd not meant to acquire, but not one he was ready to kick just yet. The gleaming penny caught his eye and he crouched to pick it up, blowing smoke the other way.

It looked different upon closer inspection, and he realized it wasn't a penny at all, but a small, copper coin of another ilk. It was hardly marked and certainly not from any country Dudley knew of. He almost laughed, wondering if people like his cousin ever ran into such oddities as this when their whole lives were oddities. Then he got a stranger thought: what if this was a coin that belonged to one of those...those strange people. The non-Smuggles? He couldn't remember the word he'd heard Harry use before.

Deciding he could do with the luck and maybe some answers to his curiosities, he picked it up. It shone in his palm and his cigarette was forgotten for a moment. Why would a magic penny be outside his Smuggle house in his Smuggle neighborhood? His gut clenched at the thought that some of Harry's people (he was sure there was a word for them but sorcerer seemed a bit intense) had been in the area. That didn't seem like a good thing.

He dropped his cigarette on the sidewalk and stamped it out, heading back inside his house with a sort of lingering reverence. Thoughts moved like molasses through his head, surprised as he was to be thinking them, and he went immediately to a set of drawers in his bedroom. There, beneath a stack of newspapers he'd collected with headlines he didn't want to read. Underneath them all was a piece of thick paper, rolled up like knights in old movies do.

 _If you ever need me,_

 _HP._

It had his cousin's address written in the darkest black ink Dudley had ever seen. He wondered if it was written literally in ink but couldn't see why magic people wouldn't just use a pen. Of course, he'd also received this message by an owl so using a pen wasn't really the first change Dudley would suggest to magic people.

He wasn't sure if it was loneliness or curiosity that drove him to collect his coat, keys, and wallet, and head outside again. Perhaps it was just a stroke of luck from a shining wizard penny. Somehow, and to Dudley's gratefulness, Harry Potter and his family actually lived fairly close by. After just a short drive, he was pulling into what must not have been a neighborhood meant for Smuggles. Every building was rundown and ivy-licked, but there were some normal things like mailboxes that made Dudley suspect he simply wasn't seeing the full picture.

The house with Harry's number was a modest one from what Dudley could tell of the ramshackle mess he was able to see, and he approached it with some trepidation.

 _...and then your luck will never end._

If Harry was surprised to see Dudley, he looked even more surprised to be offered a clean Canadian penny immediately upon greeting him. He stood in shock for a moment before raising one eyebrow at Dudley. It had been years since they'd seen each other and Dudley wondered what Harry saw.

"Won't you come in?" Harry asked, stepping back to allow room in the doorway.

Dudley was relieved to have been allowed in and nodded gruffly as he stepped across the threshold into the Potter residence. It looked nicer on the inside than it had on the outside but Dudley wasn't sure that had anything to do with magic. His own childhood home had been quite the opposite: picture perfect on the outside, no one could have guessed at what was hiding indoors.

"Lovely place," Dudley managed, looking around with a nervous expression. He wondered how much he looked like his father.

"Thanks," Harry replied. It sounded like there was a laugh in his voice but when Dudley looked at him, he was the same skinny boy with wide green eyes and a flop of black hair. It was hard to tell whether he was actually amused or just surprised still. "What are you doing here?"

The question probably wasn't meant to sting, but it did anyway and Dudley only just stifled a wince.

"I found this by my house," he said, holding up the penny again. "There's this whole thing about picking pennies up for luck and I saw it and I figured I could use some luck...I don't know if you know about that…."

Harry did laugh at this comment and Dudley looked up, surprised.

"'Course I do," he said. "I grew up with Muggles, same as you," he smiled.

"Ah, yeah. _Muggles._ That's the word…."

"What?"

"No, nothing." Dudley took a deep breath to steady himself. That little penny had brought him here, and he supposed that was probably some stroke of luck, but it felt heavy in his palm. Everything felt heavy these days, though, and he was used to the oppressive weight of it all. "I thought maybe it was one of yours. I didn't know if sorcerers or whatever have different money or something. I just thought…."

Harry was quiet and Dudley almost hated him for it. He knew the tactic as he'd used it himself: staying quiet kept you safe because it made everyone else feel like they had to fill up the silence themselves. He couldn't quite hate him though because he suddenly found that he did need to fill that silence and he had the words to do it.

"Harry, I...I should've been different."

Okay, maybe he didn't have the words. Years of grief and guilt made it impossible to say exactly what he wanted to, and he looked at Harry with pleading eyes, hoping the boy, who was no longer really just a boy, would understand.

"Dudley…." Whatever comforts Harry might've offered were cut off by Dudley's increasing irateness.

"No! Dammit, Harry, just let me… just let me be wrong. Okay? I was wrong." He hadn't meant to shout and he likely wouldn't have if he'd known there were kids in the house. In fact, there were three kids in the house, and one of them looked so much like Harry had when he was young that Dudley did a double take. "Is that… is that your boy?"

With a mop of black hair, the resemblance was uncanny. This boy, however, was well-fed, and Dudley felt his stomach clench at the realization that that made him look different than Harry had looked. He seemed so small, and Dudley wondered whether he'd ever been so young.

"Yeah," Harry said, coloring a bit. "This is James," he said, gesturing to the oldest boy. "Then Lily and Albus."

Dudley thought 'Albus' was a terrible name but wasn't about to say so, particularly when the weight of James and LIly was keen on his mind. He thought of their namesakes and everything that had happened to Harry Potter. Unfortunately, he lumped himself in the category. He had happened to Harry. He and his friends - another pang - had bullied Harry.

"After… after everything happened… everything changed. I just couldn't keep on like that…." Dudley managed. "I'm uh… sorry 'n' stuff. I'm sorry."

Harry watched him with dark eyes, and Dudley was sure he was going to kick him out. Silence spanned between them and the years between them suddenly seemed like an insurmountable gap. Dudley couldn't shake the realization that he'd been one of the bad guys, and he wasn't sure how to make that right. Not after everything.

"Ginny," Harry called over his shoulder suddenly, his eyes remaining fixed on Dudley's downcast expression. "Gin, we're going to have an extra one for dinner, okay?"

Dudley looked up, surprised. "What do you…?"

"You're not the bad guy, Dudley," Harry said. Dudley wondered if he could read his mind and then didn't want to think about it anymore because he had no idea what magicians and stuff could do and maybe he did. "You left that in the past. Bad guys don't bring their long lost cousins Canadian pennies."

Now Dudley was really surprised. "What do you mean? I thought that was one of yours or something…."

Harry snickered, losing his calm composure and stepping back to take Dudley into the dining room where a very red haired woman awaited them with a smile. "No, Dudders, that would be very strange. Even stranger than you showing up at my door unannounced after all these years."

"Stranger than eating a magician's lasagna?" Dudley ventured, daring a joke as he eyed the meal the redhead had finished making.

"Magician!" The woman giggled. "Oh, this will be fun. Have a seat, Big D."

"Yes," Harry said, pressing his lips together in a soft smile. "They know who you are. Of course they know who you are."


End file.
